From School to Battle-field: A Story of the War Days
"Say, Shorty!" cried the pachyderm, as Pop had named him, "twice last week I went to your house and asked for you, and the man said you weren't home. You were up in your room with Snipe Lawton, and I know it. I watched, and saw you come out with him half an hour later. What you 'fraid of? Think I was policeman with a search-warrant?"
The little fellow's blue eyes blazed up, but Bertram grabbed him and Joy turned savagely on the leering tormentor. "Shut up! you sneaking whelp!" he cried, "or I'll smash you here and now!" And glaring and red-faced in his wrath, Joy looked fully capable of doing it.
"Why, what have I done?" sneered Briggs. "He's the fellow that stood by the thief that's been robbing us right and left, and didn't dare let his own classmate come up in his room."
"You used to ring the bell and bolt up there the moment the door was opened, you cad!" answered Joy, "just as you did at my house and others until orders had to be given not to let you in. Get out of the way! No one in this party wants to be seen in the same street with you."
"Oh, all right," snarled Briggs. "If you want to run with thieves and pickpockets you're welcome. I don't."
But now there was a crash on the broad flagstones as the red-labelled, calf-bound, tightly-strapped volumes of Virgil and Xenophon went spinning to the curb, and, wrenching himself free from Bertram's relaxing grasp, Shorty flew at Sandy Briggs like a bull terrier at some marauding hound. Quick, alert, active, the surest-footed boy in the school, there was no dodging his spring. The whack of the leather on the flagging was echoed on the instant by the biff-bapp of two knotty fists, and Briggs reeled back before the sudden storm and tumbled into the gutter. Instantly the others threw themselves on Shorty or between the two. Briggs bounded up in a fury, the blood streaming from his nose, rage and blasphemy rushing from his swelling lips. He was ready enough to fight a boy so much smaller, and disdained Julian's prompt proffer of himself as Shorty's substitute. A policeman at the Everett corner came sprinting across at sight of the swift-gathering crowd. Joy and Julian saw him, and grabbing Briggs, darted with him down the stairway to the Clarendon's barber-shop. Bertram, Beekman, and Gray snatched up Shorty and Shorty's books and fled with him eastward towards Lexington Avenue. The row was over as quick as it began, but not, alas! the results. "I'll pay that blackguardly little cur for this, – you'll see if I don't!" shrieked Briggs at his captors, and they all knew that even as he could dissemble, that fellow could hate.
Late that afternoon the Doctor sat in the midst of his books and manuscripts in the solemn library, the sanctum in which he rarely permitted himself to be disturbed, yet he lifted his massive head and listened eagerly as a servant entered with a message.
"Send him right in here," said he, throwing down his pen, and the words were hardly out of his mouth when in came Shorty, bounding, breathless, excited, and with snapping eyes. "Ha, lad! So you've heard from Lawton! What does he say?" And trembling, rejoicing, triumphing, yet troubled, the youngster read from a letter in his hand.
Dear Shorty, – I couldn't stand it. I had to go, and, please God, I'll never come back, only I want you to know the reason and you won't blame me much. I begged Halsey not to tell the Doctor or anybody what that low sneak of a janitor told him. It's no disgrace to be so poor that a fellow has to pawn his old books and things to get shoes, and you know how I was fixed; you know that I was on my bare feet, almost, and that my clothes wouldn't cover me. I couldn't ask a penny of Aunt Lawrence, and they didn't seem to see or care how I looked. I couldn't worry mother any more, so what was there to do? They gave me a shilling apiece for the school-books, and then I took over my Marryats – I hadn't even read some of 'em – and got twenty cents apiece, and finally father's old shotgun. It was mine; mother had given it to me. It was no use to me. Why shouldn't I sell it and buy clothes? I didn't know it was so costly and valuable, but Aunt Lawrence says now it was worth one hundred and fifty dollars. It came from London. I thought I was lucky to get seven dollars for it. Of course old Binny saw me one night ["Binny is the butler," explained Shorty. "He hated both of us, I suppose, having to answer door so much, – Aunt Lawrence wouldn't let Snipe have a key"], and I guess he must have sneaked after me; but when Halsey told me it was known I visited the pawnbroker's (it wasn't a pawnbroker's. It was just a second-hand store), and demanded to know what I'd sold, and talked of the disgrace and all that, and hinted things about Joy's watch and other missing items I never even heard of, I told him the whole thing, and begged him not to make trouble for me, – I had enough. But he said the Doctor must know, and the Doctor sent me round with him and I showed him the shop, and he rowed the man in charge and said my aunt must be told at once. You never heard such a row as she made, – the shame and the disgrace I'd brought on them all. She could never show her face in society again. Selling my father's books! my father's beautiful gun, that my poor mother had so proudly intrusted to me! Why, Shorty, she drove me nearly mad. Even Halsey tried to stop her after a while, and to say it didn't begin to be as bad as she made it, but she ordered me to my room, and then came up and jawed until I was near crazy, and then when she'd talked herself out up comes Cousin Maud, and she just belched fire and brimstone for an hour; and after dinner that night Uncle Lawrence, – why, he never so much as noticed me generally, and you know how he used to pass us on the street and never see us, – he went on at a perfectly infernal rate. I was an ingrate and a thief and a consorter with the lowest order of humanity (rough on you that was, Shorty), and when he got through I'm blessed if they didn't wind up by sending my little cousin, Queenie, – I always liked her, – but she went on and preached about disgrace and shame just like Aunt Lawrence, and how good they'd all been to me, and how shocking was my ingratitude! She supposed I spent the money in liquor and cigars for my rowdy friends (I did stand treat to milk and custard pie as much as twice); and then Aunt Lawrence comes up again, and read me what she'd written to mother, and that was the last pound. I had five dollars left that I was saving for some clothes, and planning to sell the old watch and get the rest of the money I needed, but she took that away, lest I should steal that too, she said, and I was to be sent back to Rhinebeck as soon as mother could be heard from. She'd been to the Doctor and told him I don't know what, and came back and said the Doctor and teachers as much as declared they thought me the thief that stole Joy's watch. She told me to go and say good-by to you and confess everything, but I shall never disgrace the home where I was so kindly welcomed by setting foot inside its doors again. I've started out for myself, Shorty, dear old boy, and I'll make a living, never you fear, and I'll write to you sometimes when I can do so without being followed or found out. Don't let the fellows think too mean of me. Here's the one thing I've got to confess, and you tell it to Seymour. I found his pencil under the fourth bench that afternoon Beach kept me in two hours for welting Beekman with a putty-ball, and instead of giving it to Beach, as the rule is, I stuck it in my pocket and never thought of it again until next morning, just as I got to school and saw Seymour. I hunted in my pocket and it was gone. I ran home at recess and hunted everywhere, and asked the girl who makes believe do up my room, but couldn't find a trace of it. That was two weeks ago, and all this time I've been hoping to find it, or when I got the money on the watch to buy him another and tell him the whole story. Now I can't do either.
Good-by, Shorty, dear old fellow! Say good-by to Bonner and Hank and Keating and Joe Hutton. Forty's boys were always kind to us, weren't they? And if any of the class feel that I am not altogether a disgrace to them, give them a bit of love, from yours till death.
Snipe.The little reader was almost sobbing when he got through, but the Doctor was on his feet and listening in undisguised interest and sympathy.
"But that pencil was found among those things Mr. Park brought to the school!" he exclaimed. Then, as a sudden light seemed to flash over the case, he took the missive in his big, white hand and pored over the last two of its many pages. "You have shown this to – ?" he began.
"Nobody, sir. Nobody was at home. I brought it right to you."
"Then leave it with me and say nothing about it till I tell you. I will see your grandfather to-morrow."
CHAPTER IX
A week later the First Latin was divided against itself, – a most unusual thing. That it generally despised Hoover and hated Briggs was an old story. These two of the twenty-seven had long been excluded from the fellowship of the twenty-five; but that twenty-five was now reduced to twenty-four by the loss of Snipe, and the twenty-four was split, much to the comfort of the two outsiders. A grievous burden had been imposed on Shorty when the Doctor bade him tell no one about Snipe's letter, – that he had good reason and desired to investigate on his own account. Shorty couldn't listen to an insinuation of any kind against his chum, and there were members of the class who now couldn't help entertaining suspicion and saying so. Shorty's intentions of observing the Doctor's caution were of the best, but indignation would find vent, and so would the boy nature that impelled him to say that he had information when Snipe's accusers had not. Then he had to lose a point and admit that his knowledge was of such a character that it must be kept concealed awhile, which statement many of the class decided to accept, but not a few to deride. Turner was one of the latter, and at recess one day openly taunted Shorty with professing what he couldn't prove. Briggs was on the outskirts of the knot of excited lads at the first sign of trouble. He was still raging in his heart against Shorty because of the stinging blows that sent him reeling into the gutter the previous Friday afternoon. Here was a chance for vicarious vengeance. Shorty was half a head smaller than his long-armed accuser. Briggs knew that Joy, Julian, any of the bigger members of the class, would pounce on him if he dared lay hand on the "little 'un," but Turner was nearer the youngster's weight. Those were the days when Heenan and Sayers were the models of the fistic art, when Charlier's boys at Wood's gymnasium or Pop's at Ottignon's were accustomed to putting on the gloves with the master, and school affairs were settled in the neighboring stable after the manner of Tom Brown and Slogger Williams in "School-Days at Rugby." Cooler heads in the little crowd counselled peace and strove to stem the angry torrent of words between the boys. Even Turner himself, seeing Shorty's rage, would probably have been willing to take back what he had said, but Briggs had other plans. Stooping underneath the elbows of the boys at Turner's back, he suddenly straightened up, giving Turner a powerful shove that sent him lunging against his fuming little antagonist, and like a flash came the first blow, the counter, an instant's clinch, and then, as the boys broke away, two stinging whacks before the elders could interpose. "Come round to the stable and finish it!" yelled Shorty, in his fury. "Come on yourself!" shouted Turner; and, despite the pleadings of those who hated to see class harmony destroyed, away went the excited crowd, Hoover and Briggs leering and grinning after them, while John, the janitor, bolted miserably up-stairs to give warning to Othello, who had determined there should be no more stable-fights, and who came breathless into the arena just as the combatants had shed their coats and collars and, with clinched fists and flashing eyes, were facing each other for business. The ring broke and scattered pell-mell at sound of Halsey's voice, but the principals were caught. Recess was ordered suspended. The bell summoned the class in-doors, and, in sullen silence, slowly the boys obeyed. Shorty's prominent nose had suffered in the preliminary skirmish, and he had to go and stanch the blood. Turner, scowling, was sent to the foot of the class, where Hoover welcomed him with a malignant grin, and there, along its accustomed line, sat the First Latin in gloom and despond, while the head-master penned brief memoranda of the circumstance. Everybody felt there would be tragedy when the Doctor came. "The next boys I hear of as fighting around school," he had said the week before, "I'll pack 'em home to their parents." And yet the First Latin had reason to believe the Doctor had nothing but disdain for boys who quarrelled and called names and perhaps cuffed, scratched, or kicked, and couldn't or wouldn't fight "fair and square." Only a few months before, just at the close of the school-year, when the twenty-seven were still the Second Latin, there had been a laughable scuffle between two big, lanky lads in the senior class. Full ten minutes had they clinched, wrestled, slapped, and sparred in the vestibule, many of the Second Latin looking – and egging – on and indulging in satirical comment, until Beach swooped upon the surging crowd and ordered DeForest and Dominick, the principals, to their benches. The classes recited together then in Latin Prosody, a Second Latin boy many a time "taking a fall" out of the First and getting the head of the combined array. There was no love lost between the two. Pop was unquestionably partial to the juniors, and had frequent occasion to torment the seniors with satire over the fact that the youngsters knew better Latin, if not more, than did the other class. He listened to Beach's report of the affair with frowning brows, until it transpired that full ten minutes were consumed before the combatants were separated. Then his broad features expanded in a smile of amusement. "What!" he exclaimed, as he studied the crestfallen faces of the culprits. "Ten minutes' battling and not a scratch to show for it! Scandalous! Et tunc pugnabant pugnis– Hold! Young gentlemen, there's a capital start on a fine, sonorous line, dactylic hexameter. Half-holiday to the class that first completes it! Half-holiday except to those wielders of the wind-stuffed cestus. Set your wits to work – and your pencils." With that he seated himself in his chair of state, his fine cambric handkerchief came forth to mop his glowing face, and, still chuckling with suppressed merriment, the massive rector looked down along the crowded ranks of his boys, forty-five in all, and then he wiped his gold-rimmed spectacles and laid them on his desk, and then little Beekman darted up to his side, a scrap of paper in his hand, and gave it hopefully to the magnate in the chair. The Doctor glanced over it, shook his head, and frowned. "No, no," said he. "What we want is sound and sense combined. You've only got the sound, like the blows of our gladiators. There's nothing behind them. The words mean nothing. Mark the rhythm and majesty of mine. Et tunc – pugna – bant pug– All spondaic. And then – they were – fighting – with fists – Come, come, gentlemen, that line needs appropriate close. Ha! the versatile Second Latin again tenders a contribution!" and the big Doctor took the next youngster's slate, leaned back in his chair, read, a beaming light shot into his eyes; then the eyes closed, the massive head fell back, the capacious waistcoat began to heave and shake from internal convulsion, and the whole array of boys looked up expectant. For a full minute Pop lay back in his big chair in solitary enjoyment of his fun, and at last, bubbling over with merriment, he straightened up and began, "Listen, young gentlemen of the First Latin, to the satire of the Second. Triumph, gentlemen of the Second, in the victory of your laureate.
'Et tunc pugnabant pugnis sine sanguine nasi.'
"And then they were fighting with fists (full ten minutes understood) and not a drop of blood was drawn from the nose. Poetic license set at naught! Stern facts related! Half-holiday to the Second Latin! Take your books and go rejoicing! Gentlemen of the vanquished First, remain where you are."
That episode widened the breach between the classes and strengthened the conviction that Pop was "down on" bloodless encounters. Pop was thorough, argued the boys. He wanted no quarrelling, but if quarrels came, they were soonest ended when fought to a finish on the spot.
And so despite the frown on Halsey's dark face most of the First Latin hoped that when the Doctor came he would look with leniency on the misconduct of the belligerents. Hoover, defrauded of his smoke, pleaded for permission to go to Duncan's to get his fine silk handkerchief, which he claimed to have dropped during their brief ten minutes of recess. This was killing two birds with one stone. He needed his cigarette, and he hoped to create the impression that he was not among the crowd at the stable. There had been a solemn conference between the Doctor and Hoover senior, and solemn warning to the young man on part of both, and Hoover junior felt that he could risk nothing with the rector in his present frame of mind. The head-master, with doubtful glance in his eyes, said go, and not three minutes later wished he hadn't. There was a sound of angry altercation below-stairs. John's whining voice was uplifted in protestation. At any other time the class would have had fun out of it, but the class was in no mood for frolic now.
"Stop that noise and come up here at once!" ordered the master from the head of the stairs, and sullen and swollen-faced, the janitor came.
"I couldn't help it, sir," he began at once. "I ain't going to be cursed for obeying orders by any such sneak as that."
And when Halsey could check the angry torrent of his words, it transpired that Hoover had taken occasion, with much blasphemy and bad language, to abuse him for having told about the fight. Hoover came in ten minutes later, glancing shiftingly around. "Say, did that cur tell on me?" he whispered to Turner, as he sidled into his seat, and Turner turned his back and bade him go to Halifax, but Briggs nodded yes. It is an ill wind that blows nobody good. The Doctor came with gloom in his eye and thunder on his tongue. Things had been going amiss. Not another word had been heard of Snipe. A favorite pupil had disappeared because of troubles brought to light at school, and the Doctor felt that his system, his methods, his discipline and supervision were all being challenged and dissected by his rivals and opponents, and, like every successful man, he was the target for the shafts of all the envious. A high authority at faculty meeting that day had demanded news of the missing boy and particulars as to the causes of his going, had intimated that such things ought not to be in a well-regulated school, and the rector came down ruffled and wrathful. The first thing to attract his eyes was the sight of Shorty sitting ruefully on the "mourners' bench," as the boys called the settee at the foot of the class. Hoover, Turner, and Briggs were the other occupants.
"Hiyee!" he exclaimed, as he halted at the doorway. "The lad of the long tongue has let it run away with him again, I suppose! What's he been saying, Mr. Halsey?"
"Nothing, sir," said Halsey, briefly. "Fighting again."
"What! And after my prohibition! Here, you, sir!" he exclaimed, with indignation in his tone. "Take your books and pack yourself out of school, at once!"
Slowly Shorty found his legs and, uttering no word, went drearily to the bookcase, obeying the pointing, menacing cane in the rector's hand, and trembling and with heavily beating heart began to gather and strap his few possessions. For a moment there was dead silence. Pop still standing at the doorway, glaring at the culprit, perhaps wishing the boy would speak. But Shorty's spirits were crushed by the sorrows of the past ten days, and he didn't much care what happened. It was Bertram who broke the silence.
"May I say a word, sir?" he asked, as he rose respectfully.
"Not unless you wish to quit the school the same way, sir. Young people will speak when spoken to and not before. Come, you, sir," he continued, turning again on Shorty, "I am waiting for you to go."
"So'm I, sir," said the youngster, desperately, "but I can't – till you get out of the way."
For an instant the silence was intense. The Doctor stared, then dropped his threatening cane, closed his eyes and began to shake. In another instant the room rang with a shout of laughter, even the saturnine features of Halsey relaxing in a grin.
"Who's the other belligerent, Mr. Halsey?" asked Pop, as soon as he could regain severity of mien. "The illustrious Turner, I apprehend. What did you wish to say, Bertram?"
"Nothing, sir, in view of the penalty," was the prompt answer.
"It wasn't his fault, I suppose you wish to imply," said the Doctor. "Go back to the bench, sir," was his stern order to Shorty. "Remain after school, both of you, until I investigate this and send you home with a letter apiece. Any other enormities to report, Mr. Halsey?"
"Yes, sir, – Hoover. The janitor says that he cursed and abused him at recess for obeying your orders."
The Doctor's face had mellowed a moment before; now it hardened. He stood with his cane tucked under his arm, his top-hat in one hand, the polishing handkerchief in the other, flicking away the dust and smoothing the glossy crown. Foul language on part of boy or man was something he abhorred, and Hoover had been reported more than once. For John, the janitor, the Doctor had but faint regard. He was a blundering booby, said he. But that in no wise relieved Hoover. Watching his angering face, the silent boys could almost foretell the words they saw framing on his compressed lips. "Out of my school, sir," were beyond doubt the first he would have spoken, but there sat two other culprits who deserved the temporary expulsion that was at the time his favorite method of punishment. If Hoover went, they too must go, or Hoover senior would hear and ask the reason, and the Doctor hated to be cross-questioned about his school. His methods were his own; one might almost say the boys were too.
"Using blasphemous and profane language again!" he finally began, as he stood and glared at the scowling pupil. "Gentlemen never abuse a servant for obeying orders. Gentlemen avoid the use of profanity. We must have a new name, – a more descriptive title for our monstrum horrendum, our roaring Polyphemus. What say you, Bertram, Imperator? What say you, Joy? Come, wake your nimble wits, young gentlemen. The astute head of the class is silent, the second is dumb, the third sits mute," and now the great but shapely white hand, with its taper index, points to one after another, "the fourth, the fifth, the sixth. What? Have we no wits left to-day? You, Beekman; you, Satterlee; the iconoclastic Bagshot, the epicurean Doremus" (a titter now, for Doremus's taste for cream-puffs is proverbial). Speak up, Van Sandtvoordt. Gihon, Post, Dix, Bliss, Seymour, Grayson, next, next, next; the late belligerent Mr. Turner, the benignant Briggs, Hoover we'll skip, and now the other gladiator, Loquax. What?"
"Polyblasphemous!" says Shorty, with twitching lips, the Irish in him coming to the top despite his weight of woe.
An instant of silence, then, shaking from head to foot, the tears fairly starting from his eyes, unable for the moment to speak at all, laughing himself to the verge of apoplexy, the Doctor motions the youngster from the foot to the head of the class, and it is a full minute before order is restored and the laughter of the First Latin subsides. Even then, every little while some boy bursts out into a chuckle of merriment, and Hoover glares at him with new malevolence. Every little while the Doctor settles back in his chair and shakes anew. That jeu d'esprit saves three culprits from deserved suspension and brings sunshine through the storm-clouds for the day at least. But it thickens the hide of Hoover's hate.
"You think you were smart this afternoon" (with an adjective to the smart), sneers Hoover to the youngster after school. "You'll find out where the smart comes in before you're a month older, young feller."
And Hoover means it.
CHAPTER X
